Recalled to Life
by casapazzo
Summary: She's died by water and by fire."


Disclaimer: They belong to Joss, Mutant Enemy, and 20th Century Fox. I just play with 'em. Written shortly post-"Smashed," so, no knowledge of whether Buffy came back wrong or not, and just the beginning of the Buffy/Spike downward spiral. PG-13 for dark themes, but nothing explicit. Yes, the title is stupid and pretentious, but I suck at titles. If you have any suggestions, I welcome them.   
  
  
Her tenth grade English teacher was a Robert Frost fan, decorating the classroom with elegantly calligraphied poems and epigrams. "Fire and Ice" had been the last question - a bonus, really - on their final exam - which side did they take, what did they think of the author's imagery, and what arguments did they have for one side or the other? Buffy had thought of blood and dust, dreams of choking while the night stars winked out one by one, with maybe a little tentacle thrown in for good measure. She'd stared at the neat little answer space, suddenly hating the clean, straight whiteness, before scratching out some academically agreeable banality. Not making your teachers think you're a loon was the better part of valor, after all. Or something like that.   
  
_Once by water, resurrected by air. Once by fire, reborn from earth by blood._   
  
She had stopped hoping for the "normal life." Stopped expecting 2.5 kids and a house and two cars in the suburbs, because slaying was who she was, and it wasn't a bad thing to be. Somewhere along the line her duty changed into a calling, a vocation - an involuntary vocation at the beginning perhaps, but she had made the decision to seize it with both hands, to take it up and make it her life, her soul, part of her absolute being. And though she was not by nature religious, she'd seen enough to know there was Something out there, or up there, or whatever that promised her rest when her labors were over, peace for all her heartbreak and anguish. Moments of quiet snowfall....She'd clung to that promise as pieces of her life broke and fell away, but even that had been ripped from her and she simply didn't know what to do with herself. The world had burned around her and now she was a ghost in her own house, trying to remember what home felt like, to be fond of an favored object, or food, or...person. Her sister's assurances notwithstanding, Buffy still wasn't sure this wasn't hell.  
  
_taste of copper in her mouth blooming sharp and with it the realization, the knowledge...oh...he can_ hurt _her_   
  
She didn't dream at night, the closing of her eyes simply a blank spot, a not-awake stretch of time until Dawn's voice drew her eyelids back up. She wondered if vampires dreamed, or if sleep was like an eight-hour return ticket to the other side - an on/off switch for a walking parody of life. Was that really the 'bot she saw ripped apart, or was that Real Buffy, and is she the automation?   
  
_stinging blows are affirmation, proof of what she's doubted. her first real violence since she...came back and the shock lances across her nerves as she swings back. adrenaline and endorphin and here is hardness beneath her fists, a return to the darkness she remembers...and it feels_ good.   
  
The Slayer rarely stirs anymore, as if the calling has passed, and her patrols are merely so much habit. That...should ache...but it's merely one in a series of vaguely indefinable sensations of wrong. The explosions of dust and former flesh seem like so many broken sandcastles - destruction for the petty sake of it, because she can, because she's there. She'd had a gift once, an important one, but apparently it was exchanged at the JC Penny's return counter for three fuzzy sweaters and a new Jewel CD.   
  
_the dead are cold, or if they move and breathe and flap their jaws, ambient temperature creatures - once upon a time her heat destroyed them, but he won't die, won't ever leave now that she is the creature of ashes and soot still clinging desperately, foolishly, unknowingly to it's former molecular structure and their roles are now reversed._  
  
This is nothing like Angel. Riley, who couldn't tell one vamp from another, would think it was, an attempt to return to her story-book romance of old. But this is nothing like Angel. Her fingers drift more often to her scar and memories of arching under hard, cold fangs float across her wandering mind. This is nothing like Angel.  
  
_that she can bear his bruises is proof. she returns, back and back and back again to hands like burning brands and white lightning between her thighs because every moan and scream he wrings from her and she from him is heat...almost, not quite...more and more every time she gives in so easily, pinned up against the crypt wall or in her own cold bed hand slapped over her mouth so her sister won't hear is heat, the beginnings, embers she coaxes because if he can make her feel the flame she can be dispersed, ashes to ashes and dust to dust. because her blood freed a monster once, and her body another, and she's died by water and fire, she reaches for him again, and tries for the third-time charm._


End file.
